The statements made herein merely provide information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art, and may describe some embodiments illustrating the invention.
In oilfield operations, such as fracturing, cementing, drilling and the like, dusting often occurs when fine particles are used in the operation. For example, during a fracturing operation, proppant (e.g., sand, and other granular or engineered particles) can be pneumatically loaded into an oilfield material delivery vehicle (commonly referred to as a “sand chief”) and transferred to a blender to be mixed with fluid (e.g., slickwater, gel, etc.). Dusting can occur during the pneumatic transfer of proppant to the sand chief, during the transfer of proppant from the sand chief compartments to the conveyor, from the conveyor to the hopper, and from the hopper to the blender. These processes are generally open to the atmosphere, and normally do not use any mitigation measure against the migration of dust particles. On a particularly windy day, the dust problem may result in poor visibility at location, health hazards, and clogging of air filters/cooling systems on the engines of surface equipment.
As such, it would be desirable to have a system and method for mitigating dusting at a wellsite.